bitcoiner - Witness Update #13 - 2017-01-20steemCreated with Sketch.

Welcome to my weekly witness update. This is something I do every Friday as some other witnesses do too. (I did have an absence over the holidays and was busy catching up with work and everything coming back.) Hopefully, this will keep my followers and the community up-to-date with what I've been up to. Ultimately, I hope I may gain your witness approval vote.

The template used here was devised by @jesta. And as always for witness update posts, I will use the Power Up 100% option.

1. Accomplished since the last update

Upgraded all my steemd instances to the latest version 0.16.1, which had brought many bug fixes and optimizations. See the post from @steemitblogSteem 0.16.1 Bug Fix Release for more detail. There is also a pending 0.16.2 version in review and not yet released, which will bring different bug fixes and some API changes.

Renewed the SSL certs on all my domains - bitcoiner.me, seed.bitcoiner.me, test.bitcoiner.me, and steemdown.com. As I use Let's Encrypt, the certs expire within three months time of requesting them. The expirations happened late December, so users would see their browsers complaining about this. Luckily, it is pretty easy to do renewals with Let's Encrypt and the green lock looks awesome to see again.

2. Upcoming projects/goals

Continue with @timcliff's wish list and trying to implement some of the items there.

Continue being active on Steemit, Steemit Chat, and GitHub.

3. Thoughts since the last update

So many things have happened these last few weeks!

The highly anticipated roadmap has finally released a few days ago, at the post Steemit 2017 Roadmap. All the quarterly and general goals are exciting and Steemit, Inc. will definitely be busy for the year!

In addition, there have been new updates to Steemit.com, such as the nsfw options, push notifications, and bug fixes and other code changes.

There are also proposals for the next hardfork 0.17, adopting the guiding principle KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and hoping to gain adoption and make the system more robust. The community had a lot of discussion over the points, which are at Steem 0.17 Change Proposal Introduction.

As I had a break over the holidays and didn't leave word when I should have, I did receive a few witness un-approval votes and unfollows. I do hope that our paths may cross again.

Finally, thanks to everyone who have voted for me as witness. I have moved up a few spots, currently at 35! @ned has recently voted for my witness, and I am very grateful to have his support! I didn't expect to have the vote from our CEO so soon since becoming a witness four months ago! Thanks to all who support me and like what I do. It is all very much appreciated!

In essence, witnesses are responsible for keeping the network going and bringing value to the community. They are generally trusted members of the community. Here's a post from @pfunk that goes into more detail - A Full Steemit User's Guide to Steem Witnesses.